Blue lamps outside police stations are a symbol of a safer world when people could keep their front doors open and many coppers looked like kindly old PC Dixon of Dock Green.

Now Sussex Police have installed one of the celebrated lamps outside Worthing police station and received a good response.

The lamps are recognisable and reassuring. Now Chief Constable Ken Jones needs to ensure there is the policing to match.

He needs to provide more policemen on the beat and a system which ensures when householders report serious crimes they are always attended promptly.

PC Dixon was a fiction and there was still plenty of crime in the Fifties and Sixties when he was supposed to have been about.

But like the blue lamp, he was a symbol that neighbourhood coppers will be there when they are needed and even in this age, most people want that.